


Revolver Dies At The End

by cafekusanagi (RangerDew)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Dreamscapes, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, Unsafe Flirting, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:22:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29649195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RangerDew/pseuds/cafekusanagi
Summary: Revolver doesn’t know when the memory of flower fields and sunny days turned ugly for him.He’s thought long and hard about it, because it bothers him. Those days used to be his only solace, his one untouched, beautiful, blissfully ignorant memory, but so quickly they’ve warped into something hideous. He hates thinking about it, hates the harsh cloud of unknowingness and ignorance and light on his face.How can something so fundamental about him change so easily?
Relationships: Ai | Ignis/Revolver | Kougami Ryouken
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	Revolver Dies At The End

**Author's Note:**

> what the title says. song for this would be [alligator teeth by mother falcon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC_vx3TUeik)
> 
> me: what if i made my mental illness real but halfway through writing it i realized it could be fake but also real  
> everyone: what  
> me: what
> 
> also take a shot every time revolver says "reality" "real" or "digital"

Revolver doesn’t know when the memory of flower fields and sunny days turned ugly for him. 

He’s thought long and hard about it, because it bothers him. Those days used to be his only solace, his one untouched, beautiful, blissfully ignorant memory, but so quickly they’ve warped into something hideous. He hates thinking about it, hates the harsh cloud of unknowingness and ignorance and _light_ on his face. 

How can something so fundamental about him change so easily? 

He’s wracked his brain long and hard, and the one possible conclusion he’s narrowed it down to is the moment he died in the parallel virtual world Lightning had created.

_Did he change something about me…?_ And, the worse question, _Can I go back, now that he’s dead?_

He suffers many sleepless nights. Outside, the moon somehow feels more artificial and stagnant than ever.

\--

The virtual world is not the real world.

Revolver used to feel it was silly for anyone to even ask why. Couldn’t they feel it? There was no pulse of the earth, of _life._ You can feel wind and feel pain and feel anything it simulates in your brain, but you can’t feel the _aliveness,_ the realness, the moving and changing and evolving and just, the _happening_ of it. The virtual world was just a cheap imitation.

He would never settle for it, being data. Perhaps he felt it was a sad and limited existence for the Ignis, and perhaps that was why he hated them. 

Perhaps it’s why he can’t sleep, now, as he stares out at Stardust Road and feels none of the pulsating heartbeat he’d felt in it before.

He calls up Spectre. Asks him if he’s felt different lately. Then, deliberates calling Playmaker. 

He looks back out at the ocean again. Still so, so lifeless. 

Something has happened. He’s sure of it.

His hands. His hands feel fake. He trembles, and even that feels fake, too.

What did Lightning do to him? 

Won’t he wake up from this digital dream? 

\--

“I hate you,” Ai snarls at him in his nightmares. 

Revolver welcomes it. It’s the only time he really feels real. 

Ai coos, compares Revolver to his chique soap villains, roars, twists his neck and snaps his bones, crack, crack, crack. At one point, Ai sighs.

“It’s really boring here, y’know. Eternity isn’t fun at all.”

_I thought you died,_ Revolver thinks, but doesn’t say it. Ai’s eyes turn sharp and unforgiving.

“So was it all a lie? When you died and said my name. Can you still say it?” He scowls. “Your father’s face isn’t a good look on you, _Ryoken.”_

They kiss. Revolver slips back into sleep.

It’d be nice if this happened more often, is his last thought before he sinks back into oblivion.

\--

“Ryoken,” Kusanagi says, defensive and wary as Revolver walks up to the stand, Spectre by his side. Yusaku is determinedly frying a hot dog; he doesn’t even notice Revolver’s presence. How would this look, Revolver wonders, how would this feel if everything was real? 

Spectre pays for two hot dogs and coffees to go, and Kusanagi, not wanting to refuse a willing customer, complies. Revolver watches the hot dog grow brown atop the grease. 

Kusanagi looks at him meaningfully, as if prompting, _Hey. It’s your chance. Yusaku is back and you are here. Your life should move on. Reconcile with him._

But Revolver can’t, _won’t,_ move on in a simulation of a world. It feels pathetic and silly to try his hardest, running on a treadmill to the end while somebody, somewhere, knows just how fake everything is. He won’t exert any energy for this false, useless universe. 

“Thank you,” he says as Kusanagi hands over the two neatly packaged bags and paper cups of coffee. Somehow, Revolver knows that Yusaku’s noticed he’s there. They’re both trying to avert their gazes, though for wildly different reasons.

No doubt Yusaku is embarrassed. Apprehensive.

Revolver just can’t waste his breath.

\--

“Seriously, Revolver,” Ai crones. “When will you _ever_ change?”

_Never,_ Revolver thinks. _Not that it matters._

Ai pouts his lips. “Listen, Revvy- _chan_ ,” he says, _what a stupid name,_ “In soaps, there’s this thing called _character development._ Say it with me.”

Revolver doesn’t, and Ai bites his ear so hard it bleeds. “‘Character development’ is when people change throughout a story. You know, to keep things fresh,” Ai says, licking the blood from his teeth. His hands caress Revolver’s exposed neck. Revolver would describe it as _gently,_ but he knows Ai is just bored.

“It wouldn’t be interesting if the heroes learned nothing, you know! People even like it when the villains change. It’s added drama. ~Ooh~, how will they redeem themselves, right?” His face suddenly morphs into a frown. “Of course, that’s not how it always is. Some people are just evil, through and through. The audience cheers when they die.”

_Okay,_ Revolver thinks. It’s getting hazy. He feels like he’ll wake up soon.

“Do you want to be boring, Revvy- _chan_?” He snarls, and screams the next part into Revolver’s ear. “Do you want to die at the end?!” 

Pop, snap. Revolver wakes up, and the sun rises, unnerving and flat, over his mansion on the hill.

\--

“I’m sorry,” Revolver says to Yusaku. Fake realm or not, it’s the least he can do. Besides, none of it matters, right?

Yusaku holds his gaze. It’s a bit sickening. Eyes are the window to a soul, and, if this situation were any kind of reality, he’d welcome the humanity of it all. But right now, he’s just staring at an abstraction. It’s like gazing into the void. 

“Sorry for what?” Yusaku asks, though Revolver’s sure he already has it partially figured out.

He swallows the bile in his throat. “For--” The word catches in his throat. “...For the Dark Ignis.”

Yusaku’s eyes darken and cloud over. “If you’re calling him that,” he says forlornly, “then I don’t think you’re really sorry at all.” He gets up. “ _I’m_ sorry, Revolver. Kusanagi can give you the next coffee, on the house.”

Revolver gets up as well. “Wait,” he says, and it’s just now that he realizes his heart is beating rapidly. “What are you sorry for?”

Yusaku stares at him. His eyes are still sad and so, so fake. “I’m sure you already know,” he says, and leaves.

\--

Ai’s grating laugh reaches his ears. “I guess you couldn’t call me that after all, _Revvy-chan_!”

\--

Revolver is out of his mind in frustration.

Something is wrong, but there’s no way to fix it. It’s cosmic forces beyond his control, it’s the very world he lives in. He’s trapped.

He remembers dying in the virtual world. He remembers thinking it was the end. He remembers waking up intact, as if from a dream.

Except, it wasn’t really intact, was it? What did it mean to have yourself transformed into data, and then back? Dying locked something in his brain. Dying locked something in his life.

Dying, really, locked the universe.

He thinks of his dreams with Ai. They felt so, so real, realer than anything he’d encountered recently. Was it because they were both data?

_No, no, it can’t be. Revolver feels Ai’s reality the same way he felt it back when he was younger, before he died, when the distinction between the beat of the world and the screen of virtuality were clear as day. He feels the way Ai’s breath fall on his collarbone, teeth on his shoulder, eyes on his heart._

_He feels that he has a heart, at all._

_It’s funny, that something so violent and nonsensical can be akin to love. Or, well, it’s home to Revolver, and that’s something like love, isn’t it?_

_He wants the world to be okay again, but the snowglobe doesn’t obey the snow inside of it. The programmers don’t obey the program._

_Let me out, he wants to scream._

He can’t. He just dreams.

\--

“You _couldn’t say my name!”_ Ai laughs again. The fact seems to be something fun for him; almost constantly, he rubs it in Revolver’s face. 

They kiss, again, and it’s long and slow and Revolver tries to map their heartbeats, or maybe just his heartbeat, tries to map the flow of something alive and real in the atmosphere. 

It’s Ai who breaks it, and Revolver feels something akin to disappointment when he does. Ai gives a small huff. “You’re boring, Revvy-chan,” and the phrase sends a dagger through his heart, not even in a bad way, just in an… alive way. “You’re like a mirror that only reflects dogshit.” He’s frowning, now, stormy and volatile. “Some things deserve to die. You know who I’m talking about.”

He does, maybe.

“The minute he died, you panicked, right? He was really gone. No more chances for mistakes or hesitation. His will would never carry on if you didn’t carry it on for him.” He scowls even deeper, if that were possible. “You’re pathetic, Revolver. You’ll never be your own person. And I,” he knees Revolver in the stomach, “am not willing to risk seven years of bad luck for you.”

As Revolver recoils in pain, he barks out a laugh. “Not that seven years is worth very much, here. Bohman is even more boring than you!”

Revolver’s reality warps, and the sharp, exciting vitality of the scene fades, fades, and fades into weary and suffocating--

\--

“Have you felt like there’s something strange going on lately?” Revolver asks Spectre one morning on the deck of the boat.

Spectre looks at him strangely. “You sound panicked, Revolver- _sama_ ,” _did I?_ “You’ve been acting peculiar as of late. _Has_ anything strange been going on lately, for you?”

Revolver looks out at the ocean. It’s ugly. He’s put it to words; just like the warped memory of his childhood, the unreality of everything is ugly. It’s ugly precisely because it’s unreal.

He can’t explain it. And, if Spectre can’t see it, then he can’t explain it to him either.

“Nothing,” he says, and he’s sure it may have been a bit bitter because Spectre flinches, side-eyes him, walks away.

\--

“You must be confused, right? My words from last time must be on your mind.” Ai smirks arrogantly. Revolver distantly thinks that he doesn’t know what Ai is talking about.

Ai props his chin on his hand. “‘Bohman _is’,_ I said.” He splits his face into a wide grin. “ _Is,_ present tense! Well, can you tell me you’re not curious, Revvy- _chan_?”

_I have no idea what you’re talking about,_ Revolver thinks, a bit less distantly this time.

Ai’s face falls just as fast as it lifted. “It’s not like you’ll understand,” he mutters. “Stop throwing away your life, just this once, you fucking idiot. It’s getting sad.” He flicks Revolver’s nose. “Seeing everyone leave you, that is.” 

Ai suddenly screeches in harsh laughter. It grates on Revolver’s ears, but it’s beautiful, it’s rushing, it’s reality. “You’re free. You’re alright. Everything’s over for you. I’m the one that’s trapped.” He grimaces. “I can’t say you’re completely at fault, but I blame you.”

He bashes his head against Revolver’s. “Why should you throw everything you have away while I have nothing?! Why should you strive to attain me?!”

Everything is hazy and his entire front skull is split in pain, but Ai is still speaking. “Reality, unreality,” he mutters venomously. “Live already. Just because your father’s dead and I’m dead too doesn’t mean the world is dead!”

He shakes Revolver, hard, agitating his already pained head. “BOHMAN IS HELL! THIS IS HELL! YOU’VE DAMNED ME, REVOLVER, AND I CAN’T LET YOU DAMN YOURSELF TOO!”

He smashes his head against Revolver’s one last time.

Revolver wakes up.

\--

Revolver is awake.

Well, not really. Everything is just as still and simulated as ever.

_Reality, unreality. Live already._

Ai’s words echo in his brain. 

...It’s a shame that, though Ai says Revolver doesn’t understand him, Ai doesn’t understand Revolver either.

The world _is_ dead. Living, for Revolver, means that little pocket he sinks into every night, his lively and beautiful escapades with Ai.

_Aren’t you curious what he meant about Bohman?_ A small part of him thinks. It’s with dawning clarity that Revolver realizes, no, he isn’t. Because it ultimately doesn’t matter, does it?

Whatever Ai thinks, whatever’s going on, it’s real. Revolver doesn’t entirely care about much else.

_You’ve changed a lot,_ the voice in his head continues. _You were concerned that Lightning had changed you somehow, by transforming you into data. But don’t you think that what changed you the most is this desperate scramble for reality?_

_I don’t care,_ Revolver thinks back. And he doesn’t.

For all Ai had said, he was right for a part: his father’s death had solidified him into a will, and Ai’s death had killed it. Maybe this was why he felt this way. Maybe it wasn’t, and there was something more. 

He doesn’t care about all that.

Reality or unreality, digital or analog. Revolver minds very much. 

In fact, he thinks, as he looks out at the crystalline, _unmoving_ , picturesque, _two-dimensional_ sea, this world isn’t worth living in if this uncouth glass bubble is what it is.

In fact, he thinks, he’d rather be real than alive.

That’s his last falsified opinion as he sinks away once more into his pocket of dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> 3 FUN NEW ROUTES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PICK YOUR OWN WAY TO INTERPRET THIS FIC NOW:  
> \- revolver's death at lightning's hand had repercussions and now he's going insane because he's no longer human and ai's death is causing him unimaginable guilt  
> \- revolver's imagining all of this in his head because of his insane mental issues and ai's death is causing him unimaginable guilt  
> \- ai's wayward words were right and they're in bohman right now and all the events of s3 were in bohman and btw they lost in s2. so like revolvers mental illness is real on a level but also its totally not. are you getting me rn?
> 
> thanks if you actually read it lmao


End file.
